Friday, June 22, 2018

No media sideshow is complete until Ann Coulter bites the head off a chicken

Shield with Head of Medusa (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
     The word "Geek" has developed cachet. It's practically a compliment. No longer paired with "computer"—the tech aspect is assumed—it refers to someone proficient in all things digital. Fashion-challenged and socially awkward, yes, but that'll change once the stock options get cashed. Geek is good. There's a Canadian web design company called "Geek Power"
     Yet "geek" originally had a very different meaning. My trusty Dictionary of American Slang explains:
geek n. 1 . A carnival or circus performer, considered a freak, who performs sensationally disgusting acts that a normal person would not, e.g., eating or swallowing live animals ... A 'half man, half animal' sideshow performer of gory, cannibalistic feats such as eating live snakes, biting off the heads of chickens...
     Sideshows are gone. Or rather, they've gone electronic. As the nation recoiled in revulsion this week at children of refugees being torn from their parents, up popped Ann Coutler to the distressing images into context. She told Fox News:
These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks, 24/7, right now...These kids are being coached, they're given scripts to read by liberals.
     Sensationally disgusting indeed. You see why I immediately thought of bored townsfolk lining up outside a greasy, tattered tent, the barker funneling them in as they hand over their nickels. The stooped geek shuffles onto a tiny stage, clutching a struggling bird tightly by the neck. Some kind of introduction, to build suspense. Then the fowl's head goes into the snaggle-toothed mouth. The jaws come down. The crowd gasps and recoils.
     At least in a circus, you know it's an act. I wish I could say the same regarding Coulter.. When challenged, she insists she believes what she says, no matter how patently false. Maybe she likes to stay in character. Maybe she's that far gone. If so, she has good company. Malicious hallucination is so popular nowadays, I'm expecting to see it on postage stamps, the "American Conspiracy Theory" series.

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13 comments:

  1. Then, you have Stephen Miller who was the architect of the harder line on people coming to America. His family left Europe to escape the pogroms. If Trump's policy had been in place back then, his ancestors would have been refused entry and returned to Europe where the holocaust would eventually have engulfed them. Has he or Trump no shame?

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    1. Every time I see Miller, all I can think of is that he's obviously Putinh's bastard child.
      He looks just like him!

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  2. Coulter is disgusting and desperate.

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  3. Bravo.

    Many studies have shown that the most intoxicating trait a human can have is confidence. People are drawn to confident people because most of us are plagued with uncertainty. Confident people are comforting to those with the normal human insecurities.

    The problem, of course, is that confidence is rarely rooting in competence, or even honesty. Thus the confidence man.

    Trump and Coulter and the entire right wing echo chamber spew their nonsense with absolute certainty. It's that ability to project certainty that is the power of scoundrels. Somehow 6o million or so people buy the certainties these conmen spew. Sometimes the conmen even seem to believe it themselves. Kurt Vonnegut, rest his soul, saw Trump coming and wrote the following article in 2003 for the journal In These Times:

    "I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

    To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

    And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

    What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!"

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  4. "Child actors...weeping and crying...being coached...scripts to read by liberals..." Thanks for the heads-up, Mr. S...this is the first I've heard about this. Dirt-bags like AnnCoulter are not allowed in my house, because all Faux Nooze channels have been blocked, thanks to the parental controls provided by U-verse. They are a priceless asset, even if there are no kids in the household. My neighbors were sick of hearing me yell at my TV.

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    1. Grizz, you made me laugh this morning! The idea of blocking those channels on your own TV is inspired. My hat's off to you.

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    2. Thanks muchly. It's a sanitation issue. I don't want pollution in my house. I block channels with violent content, crime shows, shopping channels, right-wing channels, and garbage like Judge Judy. No different from calling in the pest control man to keep out vermin, except that in this case, I do it myself. I'm just being my own bug guy!

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    3. Sounds like you blocked all but 3 or 4 channels. Can I live with you?

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    4. Only if you can live without winter sunshine. If Patrick Henry had been an Ohioan, he'd have said: "Give me sunshine or give me death!" And there's also a whole lot of snow. One does get used to the endless gray skies eventually, but the snow is another story. I still hate it.

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    5. No thanks. I've lived in the Chicago area my entire life. When winter drags on into it's third week, I start complaining.

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  5. Coulter was, in some ways, a perfect bait to reel in many of the vulnerable, her attractiveness (at one time) and witty confidence drawing in viewers and readers to the far rightside of normal thinking. Add Trump to the mix and the whole bat-shit crazy pot started boiling over....

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  6. Trump has echoed her comments...something about phony stories of crying children. I keep thinking Trump and his supporters have gone as low as they can, but unfortunately think he/they can go even lower. I can't imagine what it will be, but I'm sure he'll find something. Really frightening.

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  7. Forget Coulter. I am saddened by the passing of Charles Krauthammer. I looked forward to his weekly column in the Washington Post as much as I enjoy your daily post. Krauthammer was one of the best. I'll miss his insight and excellent writing.

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